Shall We Play A Game?

Fallthrough

Jun 13, 2026•48 min•Ep. 75

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Episode description

Matt and Kris welcome Fernando Duran, the creator of SAD Servers, the site that drops you onto a broken Linux box over SSH with a timer running and dares you to fix it. They go through what SAD Servers is, the spite-fueled interview story that started it all, how companies use it to hire, and the surprisingly lean infrastructure (plus the tiny Go "checker") that makes the whole thing work.

We've got supporter content, of course! This week that includes why technical interviews are broken and the spite that turned one into a business, taking the number two spot on Hacker News without toppling over and the layers that keep the bad actors out, why three availability zones might just be expensive cargo-culting, the metrics that quietly lie to you (from Google-style error budgets to mean time to recovery versus mean time between failures), and the company that accidentally spent half a billion dollars on tokens. Not a supporter yet? Fix that today by heading over to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe where you'll get not only extra content but also higher quality audio. Sign up today!

If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube.

No episode of the aftershow this week. We'll have more aftershow episodes soon! In the meantime, catch up on previous episodes at https://break.show.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:

Prologue (00:00:00)
Chapter 1: What SAD Servers Is, Click a Button, Get a Broken Server (00:01:57)
Chapter 2: Why He Built It, Troubleshooting, Learning, and Bad Interviews (00:03:33)
Chapter 3: From Idea to AMI, How Scenarios Get Built (00:08:53)
Chapter 4: Why Tech Interviews Are Broken [Extended] (00:13:58)
Chapter 5: How Companies Use SAD Servers to Hire (00:23:27)
Chapter 6: Kubernetes Playgrounds, SAD Pager, and Scenario Design (00:26:37)
Chapter 7: The Architecture, Django, Ephemeral VMs, and the Consul Proxy (00:33:52)
Chapter 8: Running Lean, Spot Instances, SQLite, and Surviving in Ohio (00:43:06)
Chapter 9: Keeping the Bad Actors Out, Rate Limits and Layered Defense [Extended] (00:46:28)
Chapter 10: The Checker, a Tiny Go Agent and the Problem of "Did You Win?" (00:55:49)
Chapter 11: AI Evaluations, SRE Battle and the Agent Gold Rush (01:00:41)
Chapter 12: Spicy Takes I, Availability Zones Are Overrated [Extended] (01:04:37)
Chapter 13: Spicy Takes II, Error Budgets and the Google Cargo Cult [Extended] (01:15:34)
Chapter 14: Spicy Takes III, MTBF vs MTTR, Bad Metrics, and Load Testing Theater [Extended] (01:26:07)
Chapter 15: Spicy Takes IV, the Token Economy and Why Deleting Code Still Matters [Extended] (01:32:49)
Epilogue (01:38:26)

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(00:00) - Prologue
(01:57) - Chapter 1: What SAD Servers Is, Click a Button, Get a Broken Server
(03:33) - Chapter 2: Why He Built It, Troubleshooting, Learning, and Bad Interviews
(08:53) - Chapter 3: From Idea to AMI, How Scenarios Get Built
(13:58) - Chapter 4: Why Tech Interviews Are Broken [Extended]
(23:27) - Chapter 5: How Companies Use SAD Servers to Hire
(26:37) - Chapter 6: Kubernetes Playgrounds, SAD Pager, and Scenario Design
(33:52) - Chapter 7: The Architecture, Django, Ephemeral VMs, and the Consul Proxy
(43:06) - Chapter 8: Running Lean, Spot Instances, SQLite, and Surviving in Ohio
(46:28) - Chapter 9: Keeping the Bad Actors Out, Rate Limits and Layered Defense [Extended]
(55:49) - Chapter 10: The Checker, a Tiny Go Agent and the Problem of "Did You Win?"
(01:00:41) - Chapter 11: AI Evaluations, SRE Battle and the Agent Gold Rush
(01:04:37) - Chapter 12: Spicy Takes I, Availability Zones Are Overrated [Extended]
(01:15:34) - Chapter 13: Spicy Takes II, Error Budgets and the Google Cargo Cult [Extended]
(01:26:07) - Chapter 14: Spicy Takes III, MTBF vs MTTR, Bad Metrics, and Load Testing Theater [Extended]
(01:32:49) - Chapter 15: Spicy Takes IV, the Token Economy and Why Deleting Code Still Matters [Extended]
(01:38:26) - Epilogue

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